Kazimierz was founded as a town in its own right, just outside of Krakow, by King Kazimierz Wielki ( Casimir the Great ), who gave the town his own name, in 1335. Although Kazimierz is known as a centre of Jewish life, it was not totally so - the district has several Roman Catholic churches.
Commerce thrived and by the 16th century the towns Jewish community was one of the most prominent in Europe. Kazimierz became a walled town complete with gateways, town hall and market place in the early 17th century. Only at the end of the 18th century when this part of Poland was annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire was Kazimierz incorporated into Krakow.
On 3rd March 1941 the Nazis set up a Jewish ghetto in Krakow's Podgorze district and herded into it the 20,000 Jews from Kazimierz who had not been deported to concentration camps. Forced to leave at less than a day's notice, they were allowed one cartload of possessions per family and were crowded into 320 buildings between Plac Bohaterow and Rynek Podgorski. From here, they were sent to Auschwitz or Plaszow. Of the almost 70,000 pre-war Jewish population of Krakow, only about 20,000 survived.
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| Old shop fronts in Kazimierz |
One survivor of the ghetto was film director Roman Polanski, who, as an 11 year old boy, escaped through a hole in the ghetto wall during its liquidation. He survived the rest of the war by hiding in the forests that surround Krakow, with the help of Polish families. In 2002 he won an Oscar for Best Director for The Pianist, set in the Warsaw ghetto.
Another familiar name associated with Kazimierz is of course Oskar Schindler. He was born to a wealthy family in the Sudetenland ( present-day Czech Republic ) in 1908. He was childhood friends with with his Jewish neighbours. He moved to Krakow at the outbreak of the war, allegedly to avoid conscription, and bought a factory, which he staffed with cheap Jewish labour. Producing bomb casings for the Nazis, he grew rich, yet he frittered away much of his money on women and black-market goods, which he used to buy the local SS officers loyalty.
After witnessing the liquidation of the Podorze ghetto in 1943, Schindler vowed to do what he could for ' his ' Jews, and managed to have his factory declared a sub-camp of Plaszow concentration camp. Set up in 1942 as a slave labour camp, Plaszow concentration camp was the fiefdom of Amon Goth, the brutal camp commandant portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Schindlers List. Though it was not an extermination camp, as such, death from disease and execution were dally occurrences, and more than 10,000 people are thought to have died there.
As the Red Army closed in on Krakow, Schindler's factory was forced to close and 'his' Jews were inline for deportation and extermination at Auschwitz. Schindler persuaded the authorities to let him take 1,200 workers to a new factory at Brunnlitz, close to his home town, drawing up a list of workers who would join him. Brunnlitz was freed by the Red Army in May 1945, though Schindler had fled the night before - a Nazi party member since 1939, he would likely have been shot. He lived in Argentina until 1958, when he returned to Germany. When he died in 1974, he was bankrupt and living off the charity of those he had saved.
Another real hero of the war time era in Poland was Jan Karski, whose statue is situated in a small square in Kazimierz. He was an underground courier for the Polish government-in-exile and was one of the first to deliver to western powers eyewitness accounts of Nazi atrocities in the Warsaw ghetto and deportations of Jews to killing centres.
At the outbreak of World War ll in September 1939, he joined the Polish army but was soon taken prisoner by the Soviets and sent to a detention camp in what now is the Ukraine. Karski escaped and joined the Polish underground movement.
With his knowledge of geography and foreign languages and a remarkable memory, Karski became a resourceful courier. He conveyed secret information between the resistance and the Polish government-in-exile. In late 1940, while on a mission, Karski was captured by the gestapo and brutally tortured. Fearing that under duress he might reveal secrets, Karski slashed his wrists, but was sent to a hospital from which the underground helped him escape.
In late 1942 Karski was smuggled in and out of the Warsaw ghetto and a transit camp at Izbica, where he saw for himself the horrors suffered by Jews under Nazi occupation, including mass starvation and transports of Jews en route to the Belzec killing centre. Karski then travelled to London where he delivered a report to the Polish government-in-exile and to senior British authorities including Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. He described what he had seen and warned of Nazi Germany's plans to murder European Jews. In July 1943 Karski journeyed to Washington and met with American President Franklin D. Roosevelt to give the same warning and plead for action.
Allied governments were focused on the military defeat of Germany and Karski's message received minor attention but did not result in direct action. Disheartened, Karski remained in the United States where he earned a PhD from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Karski refused to return to Communist Poland. Instead he remained in Washington promoting Polish freedom and serving for many decades as a professor at Georgetown.
Spurred by the memory of the Holocaust, for the rest of his life Karski worked tirelessly for Polish-Jewish understanding and to honour the memory of all the victims of Nazism. In addition to receiving the highest Polish Civic and military decorations, Karski was made an honorary citizen of Israel. He died in Washington DC in July 2000.
From the end of World War ll until Poland's return to democracy in 1989, Kazimierz was one of the most deprived and dangerous areas of Krakow. Since 1989, however, Polish Jews who had emigrated have been free to return to the area either to reclaim confiscated property or simply to invest, and have driven a remarkable turnaround of fortunes in the area. Cheap property prices at the beginning of the 1990's encouraged young Polish entrepreneurs to set up shop here, as bar and restaurant owners and shopkeepers. Students - attracted by cheap rents - soon followed.
Add to this the lively cultural scene - which grew up around the resurrected Centre for Jewish Culture - and the area was already blooming long before Steven Spielberg really put it on the map. While property prices are now among the highest in Krakow, the area is still popular with students and has retained its bohemian character.
As with so many places in Krakow, the areas of Kazimierz and Podgorze really ooze a sense of history, of importance, of tragedy overcome with determination and bravery. Strolling around here, looking at the restaurants, bars and other quirky buildings, some relatively untouched for many years, I heard a violin playing in the distance. It was hauntingly beautiful and at the same time deeply upsetting because the piece being played was the theme to Schindler's List. I apologise for some self indulgence here but I find this piece of music incredibly moving and have added it here for you to listen to. The look on the faces of the audience says it all.
Itzhak Stern to Oskar Schindler "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire" Schindler's List, 1993, Universal Pictures.
